


Kiss One Another

by HeartIconography



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 05:17:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10482939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartIconography/pseuds/HeartIconography
Summary: There was silence on her end -- then rustling -- then Veronica exhaling. My heart beat fast in my chest. I tried to picture the girl on the other end of the phone, but I couldn't."You got my morning. I want your night," she told me. "It's time to sneak out, Betty Cooper.""Okay," I agreed before I knew what I was doing.





	

When I asked her how I should tell this story, she told me, "From the middle."

We were both big believers in the middle, Veronica and I. Beginnings were fine, and endings could vary, but middles were always comfortable; happy and sad and honest. I mean, you couldn't lie to a Wednesday -- you probably shouldn't even try. Such was our lot in life: to be two girls always in motion -- two girls always in flux -- two girls always in the middle.

There are two girls in this story, which was neither ever beginning nor ending, but forever happening around us.

Always together.  
Veronica and I.

~

July was the snap of an elastic band -- its sharp heat seemed to sting and echo on our skin, turning it pink and fresh in the sun's swelter. We spent that summer doing hardly anything. We were invincible in our youth; cast in gold -- glimmering. It was enough just to sit next to her.

"Veronica?"

She turned her head slightly in my direction -- not quite looking at me, squinting against the light streaming through the leaves of the tree we were sat under.

"Betty," she responded when I said nothing.

"Just making sure you didn't fall asleep."

Veronica laughed quietly, in the way that she sometimes did, where anyone else would've confused it for a scoff. I wanted to listen to that sound forever. It amazed me, like a child hearing the ocean for the first time in a seashell -- completely convinced of magic.

"You watched me drink like three cups of coffee."

"That's true," I said. "You should probably cut back."

"You wanted to drag me out here this early. I assumed you wanted me to be awake, B."

"Would've been weird otherwise," I agreed.

"All this for a sunrise? I mean, really?" Veronica asked.

I leaned back with her against the trunk of the tree. Our shoulders touched and her skin always seemed so much cooler than mine. I laughed as I tilted my head up to watch the gentle sway of the leaves above us.

"There's only so much summer left, Veronica. Then it's our last year. And then we're off to college! We have to make it count."

"So technically it's our second last summer."

"Spoilsport," I muttered.

"Only teasing."

When I look back now, I wonder how were we supposed to know that we were happy? Such things are lost in the moment -- taken for granted and forgotten about. I want to go back. I want to tell myself to appreciate it more -- to appreciate her more -- but that summer is gone.

And so many summers since, too.

~

There were a lot of questions about Veronica that I couldn't answer. She was a private person. Maybe I was too -- but in all the ways that counted, our hearts connected. A happy accident, to find a friend like that; one who wouldn't weigh you down with small talk, or was made out of sheer necessity. The older I got, the more I realized how rare it was.

That summer, I slept without a blanket. Even a cotton sheet felt like too much. The crickets singing sweet outside my windowscreen became a soft soundtrack I left on repeat. And when sleep didn't come, I would stare at my cellphone, willing it to turn on. I wanted to talk to Veronica, always, but worried about bothering her -- waking her up, or invading her silence.

Still, sometimes I would send her a single question mark. Or a heart. Or start a conversation, in the middle, without a hello -- and never a goodbye. I didn't tell her that often I wished she would climb through my window. That I wanted to hear her voice. Or share my space with her -- not to say anything at all, but just to be. I felt crazy for loving her so much. Were all friendships like this?

And still, I can remember my phone ringing that night, when the moon was high and flat in the sky, like a painting done by a child. How badly it jarred me. We were not the type to call one another -- but there was it was, the capital V that had grown to mean so much to me lighting up my room.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Did I wake you?"

"Who can sleep in this heat?" I asked. "Why are you calling me? Is something wrong?"

"Wrong isn't the right word."

I rolled onto my back, tangling the sheet underneath me and stared at my ceiling. I had a reputation for always knowing what to say, but I felt at a loss for words suddenly. There was a tone in her voice -- something I had never heard before. Something I could not identify. It made me uneasy.

"Okay, so nothing is wrong," I said, worrying the inside of my bottom lip with my teeth. "But there is something..."

"Something," she confirmed.

"And you're going to make me drag it out of you?"

There was silence on her end -- then rustling -- then Veronica exhaling. My heart beat fast in my chest. I tried to picture the girl on the other end of the phone, but I couldn't.

"You got my morning. I want your night," she told me. "It's time to sneak out, Betty Cooper."

"Okay," I agreed before I knew what I was doing. It didn't matter. Alice had been prescribed Ambien since Polly had been sent away, so one could hardly call it sneaking. I was putting on my jeans before I registered the movement of my body. "Where are you?"

"The bridge."

"Don't jump," I joked and then added, "Seriously though, don't jump."

"Jesus, Betty, I'm not going to jump."

"It's Riverdale. You never know. See you soon."

Veronica didn't respond, only hung up the phone. I could feel my heart racing with excitement. I couldn't decipher if it was solely because I was sneaking out, or because of who I was sneaking off to, but suddenly the moon seemed to leap out of the sky as three dimensional as ever.

~

The bridge was our meeting place -- particularly beautiful, and about half way between our two houses. It was a place we came to sit and talk, or to sit and not talk. And sometimes it was even a place we came to by ourselves when we just needed to think. It was a good place for that sort of thing. The lake seemed to slow at night and its sound soothed the troubled mind.

I found Veronica there, standing at the railings, watching the darkness. Though my shoes made hardly any sound on the asphalt, she turned to look at me. Maybe it was her internal clock ringing, telling her I should've been there by now -- and there I was, a mass of loose blonde hair and a too large t-shirt.

"Okay, cryptic one, I'm here."

"It took you longer than usual," Veronica said, pushing her dark hair behind her ears.

We sat down, dangling our legs off the bridge. Though she said nothing, her energy was electric, crackling in the night air like fireworks. I crossed my ankles, cautious to let my feet go under the bridge -- wary of any spiders or bats that may be sleeping underneath us. Suddenly her cool hand was on my face, turning my head towards her. Her brown eyes reminded me of a quote I had heard long ago: And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. But Veronica's eyes were not an abyss. They were warm and endless -- alive with mischief -- sparkling like a diamond held up to the light. She tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear, as she had done her own not too long ago.

Then, without saying anything at all, she kissed me. It was not the kind of kiss we had shared in the gymnasium. This kiss was not for show -- after all, there was no one around to watch us but the stars. It was soft -- tender, even. Sweet and cautious. Her hand drifted up to my neck, holding me in place for the briefest of moments -- though I hadn't thought of going anywhere.

When we parted, it was with a slight jump, as if we had been caught doing something we shouldn't have. I knocked the pebbles on the ground next to me into the water below us. They fell one after another, in quick succession. It almost sounded like rain somewhere far off, like the echo of rain, like rain you aren’t supposed to be able to hear.

"What was...?" I trailed off, unable to finish my thought.

"You were right, Betty," Veronica said getting up. "There's only so much summer left."

Before I could say anything, Veronica was leaving. A figure in the darkness growing smaller and smaller until nothing remained. I don't know how long I sat on that bridge, thinking very little, trying like hell to convince myself to go home.

Suddenly, the world seemed a whole lot bigger -- and just as suddenly, Riverdale, the town I had spent my whole life in, felt a whole lot smaller.

Smaller than it had ever felt before.

~

I didn't see Veronica for a while after that. She came and went, like a dream sometimes disappears on waking. I wasn't always sure how to hold onto her. I filled my days with books, pretending I was somewhere or someone else. I was never sure which was more appealing. The time passed slowly, sentence after sentence, world after world.

To be honest, I wasn't how sure how she had gotten in. My mother must not have been home. Maybe my father would've let her in, had he not recognized her -- but I doubted it. Most likely the door had simply been unlocked. I wondered though, how I hadn't heard her knocking. It was easy for me to get lost in a mood, or a moment, or a word -- but even this seemed a bit much for me.

"Betty."

"Hi," I said, looking up from my book. I wasn't surprised to see her standing there. It wasn't the first time she had shown up in my doorway. Even when it made no sense for her to be there, even when it was completely inexplicable, I was never really surprised.

She kicked off her shoes and climbed into the bed next to me, dramatically sprawling as she heaved out a content sigh. I laughed softly and put the book down on top of my night stand.

"How long has it been, B?"

"Years. Maybe centuries."

"No -- an eon."

"Many eons," I agreed.

She rolled over onto her stomach and looked up at me. Her brown eyes gleamed in the sunlight, their depths unknowable. I watched her, saying nothing. Waiting. I was good at waiting.

"What're you doing locked up in here?" Veronica asked me.

"I'm guessing I'm not locked up, or you wouldn't have been able to get in."

"True. To my defense, I did try knocking first."

"Did you?"

"No," she said with an impish smile.

"That's dangerous. You never know where my mom might be," I laughed.

I wondered if she would say anything about what had happened. About the kiss. The kiss, so secret, I hadn't even written about it in my diary. The kiss that existed only between the two of us. But she looked at me as though nothing had happened. I dug my nails into my palms to stop myself from saying anything. It wasn't as if we hadn't kissed before. Maybe it meant nothing.

"I wanted to see what you were doing tonight," Veronica asked.

"Nothing."

"I've got a plan. Mayhem may ensue," she said. "Are you in?"

"Mayhem? Well, how could I possibly turn that down?"

~

We were in the forest where Jason Blossom had been killed. Not close to the actual location -- but still, the fact was not lost on me. I wasn't sure how we ended up there -- if that was Veronica's intention or not. But we were in the forest where Jason Blossom was murdered and she was in a tree and I was scared.

"Get down, please," I called up to her. "I know I'm taller than you, but I have no upper body strength and I will leave you here to die. I'm have no misconceptions about being hero."

"You would not leave me here to die," she shouted back down. "Why don't you come up?"

"You know how I feel about the Up High."

"I wish you wouldn't call it that," Veronica laughed.

"And I wish you weren't in a tree, but here we are."

I leaned against the old oak and looked up. Veronica's shoes dangled above me -- Converse, so worn I couldn't believe they belonged to her. I stopped looking and just for a second I wished that I smoked, if only to have something to do with my hands.

"What are we doing here?" I asked her for the millionth time.

"Well, I'm climbing trees and you're being no fun."

"Ha," I deadpanned.

"I never got to do stuff like this in New York," Veronica called down. "I mean, I suppose I could have, but I just... never thought of it."

Veronica had something up her sleeve. Something strange and unusual, as those were the only things she ever deemed worth keeping up her sleeve. As I looked around I noticed firewood sitting close to the small  
creek that lazily flowed past us. And a bag. A plastic grocery bag.

"What's in the bag?" I asked her. "Body parts?"

"Surprisingly dark, Betty, given the circumstances."

"If you've brought me out here to kill me, I suppose this is a pretty place as any to die."

"I'm not going to kill you. I happen to like you, believe it or not," she said as she climbed down the tree, landing less than gracefully, but largely unscathed. "It's vodka. Vodka and other."

"Gonna be one of those nights?" I asked.

"Alcohol to kill the demons, B," she said with a smirk that made my heart tighten with fondness.

~

After a few minutes of sitting, we began to pile the logs into the fire pit. I wondered when she had discovered this place -- what life she led when we were not together that would place her in the middle of a forest, but I said nothing. Veronica was allowed her mystery. She produced lighter fluid from the bag and before I knew it, there were flames.

Veronica passed me the bottle of vodka, and I took a swig, grimacing and passing it back to her. I was glad I had brought my backpack with us -- though I guessed that was the point. I cracked open a canned Coke and tried to drown the burning in my chest from the vodka.

"To killing the demons," I laughed.

"I'll drink to that," she said, lifting the bottle to the darkening sky and drinking from it -- grimacing less than me, but still grimacing. I opened another Coke and passed it to her. I turned my head slightly to watch Veronica watching the fire.

She turned and smiled at me.

"Drink," she said.

I took another swig, and then another before handing it back to her. I could already feel alcohol blurring the edges of me, like an artist sweeping their thumb over a charcoal line -- I felt shaded in and oddly shy.  
Veronica drank then set the bottle in front of us. My stomach tightened up in anticipation. I could feel that she had something to tell me, but I didn't know what it was. I couldn't even venture a guess.

"What does it feel like to, you know, be in love?" she asked me.

"How would I know?" I asked her, drawing my brows together into a confused furrow.

"Archie."

I looked away from her and into the fire. All of that seemed so long ago -- like another life -- like another Betty, one who didn't know any better. Who wanted exactly what she was supposed to want when she was supposed to want it -- as if her whole life was scripted from birth.

"That wasn't love," I said quietly, admitting it out loud for the first time. I hated how silly it made me feel. "That was more... wanting to be in love."

"Fair enough," Veronica said. "But what do you think it'll feel like?"

"Probably not as exciting as everyone thinks it is," I said after a pause of consideration. "Likely harder than I'll want it to be. But good, I think. I think it'll be really good."

Veronica drew her knees up against her chest and rested her chin on them. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, and noticed she was different. Not quite the girl I had always known. Like something had been let out of a secret door in her heart. She seemed softer... and afraid of that softness.

"Are you... in love?" I asked her, heart constricting painfully.

"I don't know," she said, avoiding my eyes. "Maybe."

"Wow. I didn't even know you were dating someone."

"I'm not, Betty," she said. "Not really, at least."

"Oh. So, who is he then?"

"I'm not ready for this conversation," Veronica told me.

"You were the one who brought it up," I said, drinking from the bottle again and passing it to her.

"I wasn't ready for the reality of it. I just wanted it to..."

"Stay in the abstract?"

"Yeah," she agreed.

"Okay," I said, feeling hurt and trying desperately not to show it.

I never expected her to tell me everything -- that was who she was, who she had always been. Veronica was allowed her mystery, I reminded myself. But something this big... My stomach felt unsettled, full of vodka and sinking. I wondered if, maybe, I was not really her best friend at all -- at least, not in the way that she was mine. And though I could not explain it, in a place darker and more secret than any I had ever known, my voice floated to the surface asking: But what about me?

I said nothing.

Somewhere between our laughter and tense silence, the sky gleamed onyx like my old mood ring that no longer changed colours, but insisted that somehow, I was always unhappy.

~

I don't remember how I got home. I suppose Veronica drove me -- I suppose there was silence, a lot of it. And how I ended up in my bed, with her empty vodka bottle for company, was a mystery I didn't care to solve. And the days passed like a chugging car, starting and stopping, and forcing itself forward.

This time it wasn't Veronica who disappeared. This time I was the one who performed that magic trick with my clumsy hands. It felt as though I was both the magician and his assistant -- sawing myself in half for the spectacle alone -- hollow, and hurt, yet somehow, still whole. And when she called, I pulled handkerchiefs from my breast pocket -- they were limp, knotted rainbows that impressed no one.

To be honest, I felt closer to a clown.

I didn't know how Veronica did this with such precision and grace; her smoke and mirrors that still caught me off guard and made me believe in magic. I guess that was the trick of it, though most would call it skill.

Still, she was good at disappearing and I -- I was good at something else.

~

I went to the bridge on my own a lot that August. It shouldn't have surprised me that she'd show up sooner or later, when I began to seem less like a semicolon and more like a period. Veronica was good at pauses, as long as she thought my thought would continue. As long as there was always more.

She sat down next to me without saying anything. I continued to swing my legs, filling the silence with the quiet rush of movement, trying to think of anything at all to say. I was angry, and I didn't know why. I was angry, and she knew it, and neither one of us were good at confrontation.

Veronica inhaled deeply, steadying herself and looking out into the sky. In that moment, I wished I knew a word for her body next to mine. I would've said it. And when she turned her head to look at me, I couldn't look away.

"Listen, B, I'm sorry," she said.

"You don't have to be. There's no rule that says you have to tell me everything."

I picked up a pebble and dropped it into the water. The moon was big that night, hanging swollen in the sky, and just shy of orange. It lit up the lake in ribbons that rippled and waned, and I wanted to hold onto it -- that gleam of light -- for just a second longer than it ever seemed to stay.

"I don't even know if it's... if I'm -- I just wanted to know... in case it was... in case I am..." Veronica said quietly.

"And is it? Are you?"

"Maybe," she said, grabbing my hand and squeezing it.

"Who?" I demanded, blinking back tears. I felt unbelievably young and vulnerable. "Because you and I --"

"Exactly, Betty," she said softly, holding our joined hands up in front us. "You and I, Betty. Veronica and Betty, Betty. And I've never felt so out of my depths. So completely... over my head!"

Every word she spoke was said in a way that made my heart feel like a bruise she was pressing down gently on. Every letter throbbed with morbid curiosity. Because I wanted to know more -- but like her, I was afraid. I had barely opened that door -- the door I had always known was there between us -- from the first day we met and I thought I was jealous at how Archie looked at her... instead of how she had looked at Archie.

"I know what you mean," I told her, squeezing her hand. "I do."

"Can we just sit here for a while?" Veronica asked me.

"Of course."

And suddenly, I wasn't angry anymore. Or scared. Not really. Suddenly, I wanted that night to go on forever. August like a tender ache, or spilled ink, or a word that after all this time... I'm still wishing for.

~

We didn't go back to the forest that summer, but we went other places. Parks at midnight and Pop's -- in my dreams, I can still hear the click of her heels down fluorescent aisles and our laughter that seems sharper in my mind -- cleaner -- and somehow sweeter.

Sometimes I still wonder how I survived a love like that.

"Do it," Veronica told me.

We were in a parking complex with a cart we nicked from a neighboring store. She was holding it in front of me. I looked at her, then at the cart, and then back again.

"This is a bad idea," I told her.

"You're just saying that because it's my idea."

"When I said I was bored, that didn't mean I had a death wish."

"You are such a pain in the ass," Veronica said. "Get into the cart, B. It's barely a hill."

"Oh, famous last words."

"If that's what's worrying you, I will come up with better last words... after."

I rolled my eyes and climbed up and into the cart. I sat facing her, and when she leaned down to ask me if I was ready, she smiled wide and wolf-like -- all teeth and mischief. Sly. And proud. And uniquely Veronica.

The cart went fast. Faster than either of us anticipated. I heard her shout, but by the time I hit the guardrail and spilled out into a pile of skinned palms and knees, it was too late. But somehow, amidst the carnage, all that came out was laughter -- sharp and clean and sweet. Maybe better than my dreams. Her lips on mine, my blood on both of us.

Still, somehow, the memory of Veronica wrapping my hands in gauze remains a freeze frame that hasn't faded with age; a Polaroid of someone I love doing something beautiful and not knowing it. In the red glow of the drugstore lights, the stains seemed to fade from our hands, leaving us soldiers swearing fealty to one another, like young men bent knee to king and country.

I have to believe she knows it's the only oath I haven't broken.  
I have to believe at the end of the war, she'll know it's all I have left.

~

How many years has it been? I try to remember. I know there was a time before Veronica. A life I led where I kept my wandering thoughts under my tongue. Five years? Ten? Like the tide, I go on running -- like the moon, she is undeniable.

When I dream of Before, it's all black and white, like some rerun from the 50's. The town is empty... and so is my heart. When I wake up gasping, as if from some terrible nightmare, I ask myself the old familiar question: Was it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

I still can't decide.  
I guess it depends on the day.

~

The end of August had begun to loosen its grip on us, allowing the air to cool and return its weightless state. The smother of heat, the heaviness of summer was finally disappearing. It seemed as if everyone was asleep -- every business closed, every house with their lights turned off. I stood outside my house in a sweater, crossing my arms for the heat. I wasn't sure what I was doing.

Waiting, maybe.

I didn't see her at first. The streetlights illuminated so little, and the house next to ours had been up for sale longer than I could remember. The darkness gave nothing away. Had it not been for the glow of her cellphone, I wondered if I would've been able to see anything at all -- or if by the time my eyes had adjusted, she would've been gone. I walked slowly towards the porch, joining her on the steps.

"Veronica?" I asked.

"Busted," she said, moving over to make room for me to sit. "You may be wondering what I'm doing out here."

"Stalking me, of course."

"Well, essentially, if you want to make it sound as bad as possible."

"Which I do," I teased. "So, were you about to come over?"

"Not exactly."

"Alright. And I can't imagine you were just stopping by on your way home to sit on this empty porch?"

"Can't say I was, B."

"So, again, what's up?"

"I come here sometimes."

"To this house."

"Yes," Veronica said, looking back at the house in question.

"Even though if you just crossed the street you could actually --"

"Sometimes it's late or I don't want to bother you. Or even if I did, I wouldn't want your mom to answer the door," Veronica said. I looked up at my lit room, curtains open, and ran a hand through my hair. "Yeah, you should really close those."

"Jesus Christ." I laughed. "Are you going to come in or what? Or should I pretend I didn't see you?"

"It's late," Veronica said. "And your mom..."

"Just stay the night," I responded without thinking.

"Betty, you know that's not a good idea."

"I know. I just want... I want to be able to have you over. To have you stay over, I mean. Like normal kids."

"I better get going," Veronica said.

"Be safe, okay?"

"Always," she promised, grabbing my hand and squeezing it.

~

I turned off the light and crawled into my bed fully dressed, suddenly exhausted, but found I couldn't sleep. I turned onto my back and stared at the ceiling. I think Veronica was grateful that I didn't push the her about her late night appearance -- she had told me as much before -- that I always knew how and when to ask a question. I think that excused my silence sometimes, because Veronica thought I was searching for the right way to say something. I didn't have the heart to tell her that sometimes my silence was only my own uncertainty, and nothing more. Because had I opened my mouth that night, I didn't know what would come out. Even now, I don't know what I would've said.

When I woke up that morning, it seemed as though I had imagined the whole thing. It wasn't the first time this had happened either. Like a dream, always, or a fog, or anything that seemed to break apart with sunlight. Veronica was allowed her mystery. On my dresser, my mother had left a note telling me that her and my father were off to visit Polly. I crumpled it up in between my hands and dropped it into the trash-bin, like a stone down into the lake. When I turned, I looked out my window at the empty house. It seemed different in the morning. Like everything else. Like myself, staring out at it, trying to understand my own heart.

~

I didn't hear from Veronica the next day. Or the next. Or the next. The wheels of my mind kept turning uncomfortably, insisting there was something I should've done -- something I should've said. That she was upset with me, or that I should've pretended not to see her, or something -- something I just couldn't think of at the time.

In a move that surprised no one, I spent most of my nights across the way. I sat on the porch, where Veronica had been, even though I knew there would be nothing there -- nothing that would give her away, nothing that would tell me what to do. Though I tried time and again to will Veronica to appear, nothing happened.

Instead I stared up at my window and wondered what she had seen over the past few months. Dancing, yes -- but also, probably, crying. Reading in the bench-seat of my window, or writing there, too. Looking out at this house, at this exact spot, and seeing nothing -- thinking, sometimes, how it was so lonely to love someone and wondering where Veronica was.

I couldn't shake the feeling that she must have been looking for something all those nights -- that somehow, I posed a question Veronica had been trying to answer -- a question I had never meant to ask, and didn't know how to take back, and I was worried that maybe she had figured it out -- that I had given myself away, unknowingly, and now there would be no going back.


End file.
